The bronze medal match brings back bad memories.....lol

After the long queues (which I was able to avoid some of them as I had purchased a ticket for the hop on-hop off bus that included tickets for the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty) I got through security and boarded a boat to go and meet this lady.

Oops, yes, sorry... hey you beat the Hockeyroos! Oops, now Tizzabelle will kill me for saying that...

We were also so close to beating the Netherlands in the semi final too....

Howie,what a fab photo! Someday I hope to be standing right where you were.

The best (Summer) bronze medal Canada has won in the past few years was in women's soccer this Olympics!! Ms. Sinclair is now a national "hero" : )

Fabulously colourful pics of scenes from the Olympics, Flopsy! How wonderful that you could attend and that you shared them with us (am hoping there are lots more as I suffer from Olympic withdrawal syndrome once they're over lol).

ClaraSue: aDORable pic of the foal (and yes I read the Misty books and probably every other horse related book as a teenager lol).

Dot: Loving all your photos! Looks like you had a wonderful trip! : )

deputyg: Your last post (of a flying bird) is most likely a raven, not a cormorant lol, but flopsy is QUITE correct (of course) that the ones in the dead tree are cormorants, not herons. Herons, like cranes and storks have typically long-ish legs and do not have webbed feet. I have a picture somewhere similar - reminded me of the movie "The Birds" LOL! So I can see how the scene might have creeped you out a bit : ) Not to mention, that aside from wood ducks, it's VERY weird to see web-footed birds perched in a tree!

Anyway, herons have feet quite like the ones walked on by the endangered Whooping Crane (tallest bird in North America):


photo taken in Alberta 2011

Another country scene, Stoke Goldington, which is in Buckinghamshire unlike Woburn (it's easy to cross a few counties in as many miles and equally hard to record them).

This is a heron and no one is going to tell me it isn't.

Agreed, that is definitely a heron. Good photo.

Woo hoo! One for three in bird identification!

Here's a colourful Olympic pic for Jakeroo. After the Paralympics, the temporary buildings in the Olympic Park, such as the hockey stadium and basketball arena, will be taken down and moved to other locations. What was the Athletes Village will be converted to family flats and more housing will be built - and more landscaping will be done. All of which will turn it into the largest urban park built in Europe for over 150 years. Many trees have been planted already and were well-established by the time the games started, and along the canal and river banks there are reed beds and wild flowers. By the time the Paralympics come along, the flowers in bloom last week will have faded and new flowers in different colours will bloom in their place - but for now, here are the summertime flowers in the park:

Oh flopsy, that is so lovely. I bet it was alive with bees and butterflies as well, what a wonderful job they've done on it.

This rather handsome fellow lives in our local park.

What a lovely duck! I'm sure the dippity will know what sort it is.

And yes, you're right, there were bees, butterflies and hoverflies all over the flowers. Maybe one of the locals will become a beekeeper - who would ever have thought East End honey might be possible one day.

That's a red-billed pintail, that is.

In Essex? I don't think red-billed teals aka pintails have areas of white like that and if they do I've never seen one here. Although foreign ducks often survive here quite happily. The world's largest population of wild mandarin ducks lives in Sussex of all places and very pretty they are too. Ruddy ducks on the other hand are a pest and should be shot.

lol Gary! Gotta give you an "E" for effort. It's a Shelduck (sort of a cross between a duck and goose according to the classification folks). And yes, Christina, he IS a handsome fellow : ) Very nice capture.

Flopsy: Wow! What a progressive idea. Some of our sports venues have remained as either training facilities (like the speed skating rink in Calgary) or things for public amusement (such as the bobsled run - do you dare? lol). But I can't think of many countries who pre-planned to do something like that park/housing concept. Does anyone know exactly which folks proposed the idea? Perhaps he/she/they should get a medal too : )


Okay, here's a picture I actually took in the month of August lol. It's a fuschia blossom (variety called "voodoo"). It's really a bit darker than this in real life (and certainly less blurry lol) but the camera tends to wash out blue and reds for some reason. Anyway, it's one of the few flowering things that survived all our hailstorms/winds since the plant was hanging in the lower branches of the apple tree...

Well, ducks can go to the UK on vacation, too. Even Essex. :P

Even Essex! cheek. Jakeroo, flopsy might know more, but as far as I know the whole park idea was planned in from the very start by the organising committee, it even featured in their bid for the Games as part of the legacy of the games. It's lovely to think that visitors to the stadium for future events, plus anyone who wants to go there just to look, will be able to walk through those wonderful gardens.

I went to university in Essex. It was new and various foreign governments had presented gifts, including a number of, to us, exotic ducks. One of the boys in the flat upstairs killed one by mistake so to hide the evidence he cooked and ate it. Boy, was he ill. He didn't take out its insides... the duck got its revenge!

Jakeroo, one reason why the games cost £9billion is that some of the money was for the regeneration of the area. Stratford is a very deprived part of London and the site the games park was built on was derelict and toxic - various factories had dumped their waste there, including heavy metals and all sorts of poisons. The place was criss-crossed with cables, pylons, tracks, blocked waterways, you name it, it rotted there. One problem with sites like that is that the surroundings also become depressed, the people have no hope, and so a vicious circle of neglect sets in. So when the bid was being prepared one condition for government support was legacy - not just for sport but for the area; it should not become like most other Olympic sites, which contribute nothing to the host area once the games are gone. As one Aussie journalist said, most games sites start as arenas which become wasteland, London's is unique in that it started as wasteland and hopes to become more than an arena. Whether that will work remains to be seen but it was certainly worth a shot.

I like to think the answer to this:

Does anyone know exactly which folks proposed the idea? Perhaps he/she/they should get a medal too : )

is Boris. I wouldn't be surprised. What a hero!
Thanks Flopsy, it is so good to hear that Britain is even more great.

Along the road to Woburn Sands

LOL, not Boris. Ken was mayor when the bid was prepared but my guess is that it was a much maligned bureaucrat or three who work in redevelopment/urban planning and stuck it into a report to make the whole idea of hosting the Olympics more acceptable to Tony Blair who was preoccupied at the time with the bromance of being a poodle and jumping on a war bandwagon we still can't seem to get off. Blair would see the political capital he could make out of regeneration whilst basking in the global acclaim of an Olympics. Of course, in the end neither Blair nor Livingstone were in office when the games actually happened but that's politics for you, lol.

Great looking flower pic, Jakeroo.

Here is a Lockheed F-22 Raptor flying very low. Very low indeed.

In this area of the park, even the flowers were decked out in red, white and blue.

That Raptor is flying very low, indeed! I am enjoying the photos on the Olympics and all greenery as well.

This little barrel cactus is in my front garden area. I bought the large spider, whom I have named Charlie, as a practical joke to scare hubby. Charlie is about 6 inches long.

Just in case you are bored with the few New York photos i have been posting we shall take a brief detour back to my home town. I wander past the Timaru Lighthouse (on the track you can see) each time I walk into town and back. No longer in use and has not been in this position for that long, previously was by the Maori Park swimming pool in retirement but had to be moved again when the new swimming complex was built.

It is an old Essex tradition to paint the outside walls of a house pale pink, and many people do still keep it up. This is Mole Hall, which is close to Stansted Airport, an old moated farmhouse.

Here's a butterfly and a honey bee on my buddleia.

That's pretty Dot. Have you noticed how few butterflies there have been this year, must be the wet weather to blame.